


Sonata in C Major

by prudence_dearly



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:43:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4273959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prudence_dearly/pseuds/prudence_dearly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles encounters an orphan with a gift for music.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sonata in C Major

**Author's Note:**

> This is a reposting of an old fic from my Live Journal. In Season 3, Episode 8, “The Kids,” one of the visiting orphans keeps getting out of bed to play Mozart’s Sonata in C Major on the Officer’s Club piano. The MASH Rewatch comm on LJ imagined what would have happened if Charles had met her.

Charles rubbed his eyes and sipped at the bitter coffee. They’d brought it with them, knowing the orphanage wouldn’t have any. Margaret would insist that they leave behind what they didn’t consume. Charles wondered if Nurse Cratty and her assistant, Madam Kim, might not see this as more of an insult than if the M*A*S*H personnel took the dregs away with them.

Arriving late the previous evening, he had been unable to get a good look at the orphanage, such as it was. The children had greeted them enthusiastically at first, but their chirruping voices had faded away when they realised the visitors were not the Red Cross bringing parcels, but M*A*S*H staff there to give immunisations and health checks. Charles had pursed his lips and observed that the lack of enthusiasm was mutual. Damn Potter and his policy of drawing straws for extra duties like this, instead of simply assigning the trip to one of the captains. Lord knew they, at least, would be at home in such primitive conditions.

“Good morning, Major,” said Madam Kim, dropping a curtsey beside his table as she passed.

Charles smiled at her. Korea might leave a lot to be desired, but some of its traditions were a balm to his soul.

“Good morning, Madam,” he replied, with a benevolent nod of his head.

“Did you sleep well?”

The question erased the warm glow that a touch of feudalism had brought him.

“Unfortunately not,” he said. “I was awoken in the middle of the night by some godawful racket. Either somebody was throwing tin cups downstairs, or somebody was attempting to play that thing.” He waved a hand at the battered old upright piano in the corner of the room. “Where did you find a piano, anyway?”

“The old church,” said Madam Kim. “When the bombs hit, we rescued the piano.”

“It might have been more humane to just let it die.”

The orphanage was a collection of shacks huddled around one larger building, which consisted of a main room that was used for meals, school and chapel, and a cooking room that did not hold even the most basic apparatus of a kitchen as Charles understood it. The children, who were now seated on benches on either side of a long trestle table, slept in one of the lean-to huts outside. Charles had slept in another hut, which at least had floorboards. Next door to him, he had been able to hear Margaret and Ginger talking quietly late into the night. And then, around midnight: the noise. He’d wrapped his jacket around his head in a vain effort to shut out the sound of the old piano.

“I am so sorry, Major,” said Madam Kim. “You do not like music?”

Charles let out a guffaw. “Music? Yes - music, I like. The sound of somebody battering that piano to death, I do not like. Perhaps you could encourage your midnight minstrel to restrain his practice to the daylight hours.”

Madam Kim bobbed again, and moved off to the children’s table, where many small, round, worried faces were watching the three strangers.

“Honestly, Charles, you don’t have to be so rude,” whispered Margaret. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“I liked it,” said Ginger. 

“Perhaps to the untrained ear,” said Charles, “it was, as you say, ‘not that bad.’ For someone such as myself, it was like hearing Mozart on the rack. That piano should be broken up and used for kindling, immediately. It certainly has no life left in it as a musical instrument.”

Madam Kim reappeared at their table. Beside her was a girl who couldn’t be older than eight. She stood with her head bowed and hands tucked into her sleeves.

“This is Sang-mi,” said Madam Kim. “She loves the piano. Often she plays when she should be working, or sleeping.”

This? This is your midnight pianist?” Charles shot incredulous looks from the girl to Madam Kim. “Oh, please. Give me a little more credit than that.” He rose from the table, taking his coffee with him and adding, as he went, “Don’t tell me, you also have a ten-year-old who dancers like Ana Pavlova and a toddler impresario to rival Stravinsky.”

 

*

 

The immunisations didn’t take long, aside from the usual crying and protesting from the younger children. Margaret had managed to scrounge up some lollipops, which smoothed the way considerably. It was the general check-ups that took most of the day. There was a boy with shrapnel wounds, and a young mother-to-be, various dysenteries and bugs, and one case of chronic asthma. There was a parade of little bodies, nervous faces and worrying symptoms.

In the evening, with the oil lamps casting a warm yellow glow across it, the orphanage looked almost cosy. The kids had eaten a sparse meal and were seated at their long table, listening to one of the older children. According to Margaret, the girl was telling a folk tale.

“Your Korean is improving,” Nurse Cratty said. She was holding a toddler on her lap, swaying gently, as if she didn’t quite know she was doing it. The child’s eyes were heavy-lidded.

“Oh, not really,” said Margaret, pleased. “I can only read a couple of words, but I recognise a lot more when I hear it spoken.”

The story came to an end, and one of the figures at the table jumped up, and headed towards the piano.

“Ah,” said Nurse Cratty. “I see someone’s keen to perform for our guests.”

Charles managed a tight smile, and steeled himself for torment. Ginger and Margaret both leaned forward, listening intently.

It took a moment, but then Charles heard it. Mozart’s Sonata in C Major. The piano was out of tune, and some of the notes appeared to be missing entirely – perhaps the strings had broken. The girl played quickly and without sheet music, her head bowed over the keys and small fingers hitting deliberately at the keys. She only knew part of the piece, and played it through twice. Margaret and Ginger applauded when she finished, smiling brightly. Charles sat where he was, dumbfounded.

“Where on earth did she learn to play that?” he asked.

“Oh, she heard it on the radio,” said Nurse Cratty.

“That is…” he trailed off. “Ask her to play something else!”

The three women exchanged surprised looks, and Nurse Cratty called out to the girl. There was a hesitation, and then Clementi, recognisable despite the flat notes and the tinny tone of the old piano 

“What’s her name, again?” asked Charles.

“Sang-mi.” 

“Sang-mi,” he repeated, and this time he would remember. “Good Lord.”

He listened to her play until it was the children’s bedtime.

 

*

 

Charles found Nurse Cratty early the next morning, talking to a local man with an ox and cart.

“Ah, Nurse Cratty!” Charles hurried over. “I was looking for you. What’s this?” He looked at the large basket balanced on the back of the ox cart.

“The Red Cross is distributing seed rice. One of our local families picked up a load for us, and now,” she hoisted the basket up onto her hip, “we’ll plant it.”

She started out towards the field behind the main building, the children following her like a flock of birds.

Charles stuck to Nurse Cratty’s side. “I need to speak to you about Sang-mi.”

“You’re gonna have to talk fast; your bus is leaving.” Charles cast a glance over his shoulder. Major Houlihan was loading the last of their luggage into the jeep. They were leaving most of their equipment and supplies with Nurse Cratty, so the packing hadn’t taken long.

“I really must insist that something be done with her,” Charles said.

“What?” asked Nurse Cratty, distractedly.

Madam Kim came over, carrying pails and old jars and cans. Between them, they lugged the basket over to a rickety table and started to scoop up seeds and hand the containers out to the children. Madam Kim led them out into the field and they began planting.

“Nurse Cratty, I’m not sure you fully comprehend what you have on your hands.”

“Sure I don’t,” she replied, handing an old tin can brimming with seed to a child. “I’ve got a little girl who gets up all hours of the day and night to play on that old hunk of junk when she should be sleeping or fetching water or looking after the younger ones.”

“She plays exceptionally well,” Charles said, “for one so young, and with no training. If she learned to play Mozart by ear, she could do extraordinary things!”

“And there I thought I heard you calling it a godawful racket.” Nurse Cratty paused in her work, and fixed her sharp eyes on him. Charles gaped for a moment, irresistibly reminded of his childhood nanny, who had wielded the same sort of look.

“I may have overreacted,” he admitted. “I do not generally take well to being woken in the middle of the night. But I’m willing to overlook it now. You really do have a prodigy in your orphanage, Nurse Cratty. Surely you see that?”

“Look, Major.” She uttered some quick instructions in Korean to one of the older children, then turned back to Charles. “Sang-mi will have safety, and food, and basic schooling and health care as long as she’s with me. That’s the best we can do."

“But what about her talent?” he demanded. “She should be practicing every day, she should have a proper teacher. She needs schooling – she needs a decent piano!”

“You find a music school that’ll take her for nothing, Major,” said Nurse Cratty wearily, “and I’d be happy to send her along.”

“But!” spluttered Charles. “But it’s such a waste!”

“Tell me about it,” the old woman replied. She handed out the last of the seeds and straightened up, hands going to the small of her back. “I understand how you feel, Major Winchester. I’d like to give these kids more, but this is what we’ve got, here and now. And it’s going to have to do.”

Charles set his jaw. “It won’t do,” he gritted out. “I will not stand by and let such talent go to waste. Something must be done. And I shall see to it.”

 

*

 

Hawkeye stormed into the Swamp without a word, letting the door slam shut behind him. He went straight to the still, and loaded up a glass.

BJ followed him, more quietly. He took a martini from Hawkeye, and they both drank. BJ sat down on his bunk, rolling his head on his shoulders and rubbing at his neck.

“I am going to get drunk,” announced Hawkeye to nobody in particular. “You know, I have a theory. If I drink all the alcohol in Korea, everyone else will have to sober up. And if you’re sober in Korea the one thing you know is that you don’t want to be sober in Korea. So they’ll either have to figure out a way to end this stupid war, or they’ll have to figure out a way to get more alcohol – which is good news for me, either way.”

“Spare some of all the alcohol for your old bunkie?” asked BJ plaintively, holding out his glass for a top-up.

“Sure,” said Hawkeye, “but you’d better be quick, because there’s a lot of alcohol for me to get through, and I don’t want to waste any time. Charles? Want to get in on this before there isn’t any of this left for you to get in on?”

“I would rather drink gasoline,” Charles replied evenly, without looking up from the letter he was writing.

“You may have to, once I’m done.”

“What are you doing, Charles?” asked BJ, evidently casting about for a change of subject.

“Not another poison pen letter to I-Core, I hope,” put in Hawkeye. “Last time you complained that your surgical skills were atrophying they sent you a trophy case. Which was either very clever or very stupid." 

“I am writing to my father,” said Charles, just to stem the manic flow from Hawkeye. “I’m going to set up a fund for Sang-mi.”

“The pianist kid?” said BJ.

“The child prodigy, yes.”

“You’re setting up a fund?” repeated Hawkeye, sloshing gin into his glass.

“For schooling, tuition, so on.” Charles waved a hand carelessly. 

“And where will this fund be lodged?” asked Hawkeye. “The First National Bank of Korea? There’s no such thing, Charles. Maybe if she lived in Seoul, maybe then you could find a bank that isn’t going to disappear overnight, but even then for all we know the Korean government could seize the funds anytime they liked. And that’s without the gangs, the corruption, the likelihood that at any moment South Korea will be completely overtaken by North Korea and all careers, including your little friend’s, will be moot.”

“Thank you very much,” drawled Charles, doing his best to ignore the soliloquy. “Remind me to check with you next time I need to review my stock portfolio.”

“He’s right, Charles,” chipped in BJ from his bunk.

“Fine!” Charles crumpled the letter in a furious gesture and flung it from his desk. “Fine! I shall… I shall enroll her in a school, and pay her tuition directly from the States.”

Hawkeye was already laughing. “A school. A girls’ school, what, like the ones they have in Boston? You’d better hope her little white gloves don’t get dirty in the next bombing.”

“There are schools in the south.” Charles’s composure was strained. He glared across the tent at Hawkeye, who glowered back.

“Yeah, for now. And even if you sent her away, what kind of a life would she have? An orphan girl in a strange city, with no one to look out for her? And everyone would know that she was being sponsored by a rich American soldier – do you know what they do to Korean kids here with GI fathers?”

“I’m not her father!”

“They don’t know that. And they wouldn’t stop to do a blood test, either.”

“You can’t sweep a child off someplace else just because you feel like it, Charles,” put in BJ. “Her home is – her home _was_ here.”

“It’s not any more,” snapped Charles, “as your bunkie here is only too quick to point out, she is an orphan.”

“Exactly,” said BJ. “She’s already lost her family and her home, and she’s found a new one of each with Nurse Cratty. That makes her one of the lucky ones.”

“Oh, lucky?” He jumped up and paced around the tent, hands in his pockets. “Lucky? Sleeping on a dirt floor with twenty other children? Eating one bowl of rice a day, with cabbage if it's a good day? No running water, no proper schooling, being run out of their home every few months or weeks by soldiers and shelling? And that talent! That talent, going to waste! Being taken away somewhere else would be the best thing for her!”

“That’s not your decision to make,” BJ was saying, at the same time as Hawkeye said, “Welcome to Korea, Charles. You think there aren’t hundreds of kids out there with her talent? You think there aren’t little Einsteins and Schwitzers and Picassos out there who could do wonderful things, and be wonderful things, if it wasn’t for this stinking war? What about them? Huh? What about that kid in post-op with one eye, what about his hopes and dreams and talents going to waste? Why should this kid be any different, just because Charles Emmerson Winchester the Third found her and decided he felt like being a benefactor today? Who the hell do you think you are?”

BJ was standing up now, too. “Easy, Hawk,” he said.

“She’d be better off – ” Charles began, bridling. Hawkeye slammed his martini glass down onto the stove and squared up to him.

“She’s better off exactly where she is! If she’s lucky she’ll get cabbage tomorrow, and if she’s lucky she won’t get her arm blown off by a landmine, and if she’s really, really lucky she’ll just about manage to live through this endless nightmare and to hell with the piano – to hell with your precious music – if she gets to survive that’s a true talent.”

There was a moment of heated silence. Then BJ put his hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder to pull him away, to put some space between them. Hawkeye shrugged him off, and stormed out of the tent. BJ went to follow him, and paused at the door.

“I know you mean well, Charles,” he said. “I’d want to help, too.” He looked as if he was going to say something else, but instead he turned and followed Hawkeye out into the night.

 

*

 

The Officers’ Club was empty except for Klinger behind the bar and a lieutenant in the corner who had passed out three hours ago and was now snoring peacefully. 

Charles swirled the last of the whiskey around the bottom of his glass, swallowed it, and held out the glass for more. It was a crass blended malt that soured his mouth and offended his nose as much as his sensibilities, but it was, as they said, doing the job. A warm, fuzzy haze was hanging around him. If he kept drinking it would draw in, and snuff out his last remaining miserable thoughts.

“Gimme a beer, Klinger.” Hawkeye slid onto the barstool beside Charles.

“At last, a friendly face,” chirped Klinger, opening a bottle and sliding it over to Hawkeye. “I’ve been stuck with Major Miseryguts and Sleepy McFall-down over there since eleven o’clock.”

“It’s been a rough night,” said Hawkeye.

“You wanna talk rough?” Klinger leaned over the bar. “I spent thirteen hours in OR yesterday too, ya know, and when it was over I spent another two hours in the kitchen peeling potatoes and fighting off cockroaches as big as a cat. Seriously, one of them tried to take the potato peeler right out of my hand! I know, I know, go away, Klinger.” He retired to the far end of the bar, still muttering, “Bring me a beer, Klinger, mop up that blood, Klinger, why are these mashed potatoes crunchy, Klinger. It never ends.” 

Charles sipped from his whiskey and said, “What.”

“Huh?” Hawkeye took a pull at his beer and gave Charles his best innocent expression.

“What. Do you want?” Charles barked.

“Oh, I just thought I’d drop in on the local hotspots, you know, maybe have a cocktail or two before I take in a show. Then dinner, later, at the Rainbow Rooms and a late-night stroll in the park.”

“Your frenzied delusions hold no interest for me.” The whiskey was almost half gone already. It really was the proverbial firewater, and yet it seemed to be going down awfully easily.

“BJ said he saw you come in here a couple of hours ago.” Hawkeye’s voice took on that unfamiliar tone, the one it had taken Charles a couple of months to recognise. It was seriousness.

Charles rolled his eyes. “And you thought you’d come over and see if you could hammer another few nails into the coffin of my resilience.”

“No, but I might hammer a stake through the heart of your pomposity.” Hawkeye took a breath. Then, “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all those things to you, earlier. It was just… Having to take that Corporal’s eye out, and our second thirteen-hour shift, and… well, everything. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that there might still be something good out there, you know?”

“You’ve changed your tune,” Charles said sourly.

“Well, I got some sleep, and I ate what the cook whimsically refers to as dinner, and I remembered that you’re not the bad guy here.”

“You really shouldn’t apologise, Pierce. You opened my eyes. What was I thinking? That I could swoop in and rescue Sang-mi, fix it so she could go to school, eat some decent food, grow up to be a concert pianist? Ha! Even back home in Boston none of those things would be guaranteed, and here…” He looked around himself in disgust. “Here, she’ll be lucky to make it through the week.”

“She is lucky,” said Hawkeye quietly. “She’s got Nurse Cratty to look after her, and lots of brothers and sisters to play with, and most of the time she’s got somewhere safe to sleep at night. That’s a lot.”

Charles snorted, and drained his glass.

“Yes. For now. Tomorrow, who knows? Who cares?”

“You do.”

Charles climbed off his bar stool and trudged towards the door. Hawkeye was at his elbow immediately.

“You do, Charles. I know you’d rather eat glass than admit it, but you’re a decent person, and you care about that little girl.”

“No.” Charles rounded on him. “I do not. I was temporarily labouring under a compulsion. The child has talent, which naturally awakened in me an impulse to nurture that talent. But when you see a flower blooming between the slabs of the sidewalk, do you water it, do you feed it, do you put up a little privet hedge around it to protect it? Or do you just… walk on by?” Charles pushed out through the door and let it slam behind him.

Hawkeye let out a sigh that was half a groan. He climbed back onto a barstool and, as Klinger opened him a fresh bottle of beer, observed, “Strange, isn’t it? No matter who’s arguing which side, the war always wins."

 

*

 

The doors to the office clattered, and Charles’s voice drove the last soft clouds of sleep away.

“Up, Klinger! Up, up, up! There’s no time to tarry in bed, there’s work to be done, and _now_.”

Klinger rolled out of bed and struggled into a shirt, blinking hard. By the time he’d stumbled across the room and into the desk chair his eyes were fully open.

“I want to send a telegram,” Charles was saying. “To Boston.”

“Boston, Mass – ”

A hand clasped Klinger’s shoulder, and Charles bent to speak into his ear.

“Yes,” he murmured. “ _That_ Boston.”

Klinger grabbed a pad and pencil. “Okay, Major. Shoot.”

“‘To Mrs Marjorie Barclay, Boston, Massachusetts. Begging your assistance, stop. Please send immediately sheet music, to whit, Clementi Sonatinas, Bartok Romanian Dances, Kabalevsky Opus 39 and the Bastien Piano Primer, stop.’”

“Uh…” said Klinger.

“Here.” Charles thrust a slip of paper under his nose. “I wrote the names down for you. I’m aware that, under your tender care, Bartok is likely to become ‘bar top’.” He gave what on anyone else would be a jovial smile. “Finish it, ‘With grateful thanks and best wishes, Charles Emmerson Winchester III.’”

As Klinger scribbled the last of the message, Charles strode to the door.

“I want that sent as soon as possible, Klinger. There’s a new extra-large cotton handkerchief in it for you.” With another rakish smile, he was gone. 

Standing outside in the compound, Charles took in a deep breath. If he ignored the scent of machine oil and a persistent waft from the kitchens, he could just about enjoy the fresh morning air.

 

*

 

The telegram arrived a day later, when Charles was reclining on his bed, reading. Ever eager for any news to relieve the tedium, Hawkeye and BJ abandoned their latest efforts to improve the filtration of the still, and focused on Charles.

“What is it?” asked BJ. “Father decided to add another wing to the greenhouse?”

“Your sister’s run off to join the circus!” countered Hawkeye.

Charles’s smile as he read the telegram only spurred them on.

“Come on, Charles, spill! What is it? News from home, right?”

“Indeed, it is – good news from Boston.” Charles sat up on the side of his bed and began to pull on his boots.

“Don’t torture us, Charles,” complained BJ. “Share. I told you all about it when our dog had kittens.”

“Oh, very well,” said Charles. “It is a missive from my former piano teacher, Mrs Barclay. I sent her a request for some sheet music, and she has responded to assure me that it is on its way. Of course, knowing army mail there’s every chance it won’t be here until Christmas, but, gentlemen,” he stood and folded the telegram into his pocket, “I prefer to take the optimistic approach. I have every faith that the shipment will be here in good time, and Sang-mi and I will be able to commence our lessons.”

“What?” Hawkeye’s face changed.

“What lessons?” asked BJ.

“I have arranged with Nurse Cratty to give Sang-mi piano lessons. I’m no concert pianist myself, and under normal circumstances I do not have the temperament for teaching, however, I am willing to make an exception on this occasion. Likewise the piano at the orphanage leaves a lot to be desired. But it will do, at a pinch.” He went to the door.

“So you decided to water it after all?” said Hawkeye. His eyes were dancing.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The flower in the sidewalk, remember?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on! In the Officer’s Club two nights ago! You said you were giving up, that you wouldn’t try to protect a flower in a sidewalk, you might as well just let it be trampled.”

“I assure you I said no such thing,” said Charles, insulted. He raised a hand to forestall Hawkeye’s outraged response. “Oh, very well, very well, I might have briefly indulged some maudlin sentiment. We all do, from time to time.” He raised an eyebrow at Hawkeye.

“Right,” said BJ slowly, smiling.

“So, you’re not giving up?” said Hawkeye.

Charles drew himself up to his full height. “I am a Winchester!” he declared. “Winchesters never give up!” He looked at them both. “It may not be perfect. It may not even be for long. And it certainly is not all that she deserves. Yet it is what I can do, here and now. I would be a sorry excuse for a man if I did not do that.”

 

*

 

The battered old upright piano, salvaged from the bombed-out church, was missing keys here and there. Those that remained were seldom in tune. The pedals thumped, shaking the whole body of the instrument. The notes it yielded were tinny and quavering. And yet, the music. The music she made was beautiful.


End file.
